


Fucking Sheilas

by FB Wickersham (perpetfic)



Series: The Blue Stones [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Chaos Demon - Freeform, Gen, Supernatural - Freeform, The Blue Stones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-06 16:39:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11604624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/FB%20Wickersham
Summary: Hazel's got finals in three days, and there's something supernatural acting up at the Starbucks. She does not need this.





	Fucking Sheilas

Hazel was halfway through her American History reading and three-quarters of the way through her Americano with an extra shot when the blue stone around her neck pulsed warmly against her skin. 

“Goddamnit,” she murmured as she marked her place with a sticky note and looked up to survey the room. She’d been concentrating on her reading like one does three days before finals, and she was mildly surprised at how busy the Starbucks had gotten. An hour ago, it had been her, another terrified-looking college student in the far corner, and two old men sharing a newspaper across the arm rest of a set of leather chairs. Now, half the tables were full, and there was a line at both the counter and the pick-up area. 

Hazel looked over everyone, dismissing the other students who had joined the unofficial, pre-finals encampment and the two old men who appeared to have moved onto showing each other pictures on their phones. The chances of supernatural issues with any of them were low. A power spike that would set off her Blue Stone required someone—or some _thing_ \--having a bit of a fit and losing control over their levels. 

The woman at the counter seemed cheery. The two people behind her were discussing options. The fourth person in line was a man in a suit who glanced up every few seconds from his phone but gave off no feeling of impatience. 

“I said half-foam,” a woman said by the pick-up area.

Hazel zeroed in. The woman wore denim capris with a wide cuff, a pastel green T-shirt with loopy flowers printed on it, and a pair of thick-soled sandals that showed off a perfectly done pedicure in teal. Her sunglasses sat on her head and were studded with pink gems. Her cell phone, clutched in one hand, was also studded with pink gems. Her hair was blonde, cut in a bob and precisely styled so it layered perfectly on the back. 

Hazel rolled her eyes as she stood and closed her book. She tapped the table twice, and there was a brief glow that confirmed her space would be untouched when she returned. She walked over to the pick-up area and approached the woman from the side, pulling her necklace from under her shirt as she did so.

The woman glanced at her, then did a double-take at the necklace. She met Hazel’s eyes, and her own flashed slit pupils for just a moment. “What?” she snapped.

“You’re in the wrong Starbucks,” Hazel replied. 

“I am not.” 

“You are.” Hazel waved a hand, dropping a subtle protection spell on the room as a whole, leaving herself and the creature—a lot of things had slit pupils, so she couldn’t narrow it down—alone in a sort of bubble to talk. “This is Stone territory. Trust me,” she tapped her necklace. “I know.”

“Starbucks is neutral. The Inter-Magic Pact of 1997.”

“ _Some_ Starbucks are neutral. The Inter-Magic Pact of 1997 just agreed to non-aggression agreements in all locations in case of confusion or need.”

“I’m being non-aggressive!” Sparks jumped off the creature’s fingertips in a flash of color and temper. 

“You’re being a dick to the barista, and you’re some sort of minor chaos demon,” the sparks had given it away. Only chaos demons sparked a rainbow of colors when upset. “Meaning your whole thing is to be a dick to baristas. So, no, you are not being non-aggressive.”

“She made it wrong! I said half-foam!”

Hazel didn’t want to make a scene. She just wanted this thing to get out the door. “Look—what’s your name?” 

“Sheila.”

Of course. Slightly hard to spell, just out-of-fashion enough someone might not know how to say it because they’d only seen it written. The perfect sort of name to pick a fight with some poor person making their seventy-eighth double-chocolate frap in a row. 

“Okay, Sheila, look. I’m not trying to start anything, and I’m willing to overlook that you came here to start shit—“

“The foam—“

“And I’m willing to let you out of here without lighting your tail on fire under that glamour, but you have to leave now.”

“I wanted half-foam.”

“Get it somewhere else. I’ve got finals in three days and a month of reading to catch up on because some of your little asshole friends went brotastic on a sorority house.”

“Alpha Chi?”

“Yeah.”

Sheila beamed. “Oh, those weren’t my friends. That was my squadron. Great work by all of them. Were you there when two of them got those three girls to fist fight?”

Hazel had gotten a cracked rib breaking up that fist fight. Two of the girls did crossfit, and the third had been a lacrosse player. She twisted her wrist, and her wand flashed into being. “I take back what I said about not lighting you on fire.”

Sheila squealed—not a human sound, but an otherworldly window-breaker sort of thing—and leapt at Hazel. Hazel met her head-on, getting her wand center on one of the loopy flowers and murmuring the incantation to send her back from whence she came. 

It was over that quickly. No smoke or dust, just an empty space where she’d been and her disputed drink on the counter. Hazel leaned over to look into the cup and shook her head. “That is so half-foam,” she muttered and walked back to her table before dropping the protection spell.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Story came about because there was a discussion on tumblr about how you should never trust anyone in a Southern Gothic story who has a "Live, Laugh, Love" sign, and that led to me imagining THAT type of person at Starbucks as a minor demon.
> 
> 2\. The Blue Stones is a universe I made that I play in sometimes that has never seen the light of day. Not certain if you'll see more of it. It's magic.


End file.
